Gulbuddin Hekmatyar

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (born 1947) was the Prime Minister of Afghanistan from 1993-1994 and 1996 and Prime Minister of the Northern Alliance from 1996 to 1997. Formerly an ally of the Northern Alliance resistance to the Taliban, he later joined Al-Qaeda and his Hezb-i-Islami movement (backed by Iran) became a terrorist group.

Biography
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was born in Imam Saheb, Kunduz Province, in Afghanistan in 1947 to a Sunni Pashtun family. Hekmatyar founded Hezb-i-Islami in 1977, in opposition to the communists in the country, and he was funded by Pakistani ISI during the 1980s Soviet-Afghan War. Hekmatyar commanded Mujahideen forces, but was infamous for fighting over the mujahideen rather than killing Soviets.

In 1992, with communist President Mohammed Najibullah's defeat, Hekmatyar fought in the civil wars for control over the country. He served as Prime Minister of Afghanistan from 1993 to 1994 under the Northern Alliance banner, but at the same time he had his own faction, the Hezb-i-Islami. In a three-way civil war that saw some warlords from the Northern Alliance fight each other, Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami and some Northern Alliance warlords fought/allied with the Northern Alliance and fought the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Initially, Pakistan supported him because he sought to establish a Pashtun country that would be friendly with Pakistan. But when it became clear that he would never achieve his goal, Pakistan backed Taliban instead and Hekmatyar was unsupported. After the capture of Kabul in 1996 by the Taliban, Hekmatyar was defeated and fled to Iran.

After the 9/11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda in 2001, Hekmatyar proclaimed his anti-American stance and allied with Osama bin Laden. In 2002 the US tried to kill him by bombing his convoy, but the missile missed its target and Hekmatyar survived. He allied with his former Taliban enemies and fought the United States, and he was suspected for the attempted assassination of President Hamid Karzai.